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Aug 12, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Andrea Mathews |Chris Castaldo |Tim Keller |Justin Taylor
I sat in the pew next to one of my students, both of us dabbing tears as we listened to words about her classmate and my former student who passed away a few days prior. Everyone who knew Kyleigh knew she loved Jesus. Her evident faith gave us immense peace as we mourned. Later, I spoke with a colleague who’s a fellow believer. She doesn’t often speak about her faith in the classroom, but being a Christian is intimately tied to her identity and many of her students know this about her.
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Aug 11, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Chris Martin |Chris Castaldo |Tim Keller |Justin Taylor
This spring, my wife and I looked at the sky from our backyard. We marveled at ribbons of solar wind—launched by our sun more than 93 million miles away—that lit up as they smashed against the earth’s magnetosphere. The northern lights reached into the American South in a magnificent display of cosmic violence. In that moment, I was struck: life on this earth is beautiful even if tragically temporary.
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Aug 10, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Jay Kim |Chris Castaldo |Tim Keller |Justin Taylor
“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jer. 29:7)During most of my college years, I worked part-time at a bank. I started as a teller before eventually becoming an assistant branch manager. The job paid well, especially for a young college kid, and was straightforward. It was the sort of work that was easy to leave behind when the workday ended.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Robert Cheong |Tim Keller |Chris Castaldo |Benjamin L. Gladd
Every pastor encounters challenges—gaps between God’s design and his own ministry reality. Our programs and discipleship efforts produce less fruit than we want (ministry gaps). Our people struggle to love and care for one another as they ought (community gaps). We struggle to find and equip the people necessary to do the work of the ministry (leadership gaps).
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Sara Osborne |Tim Keller |Chris Castaldo |Benjamin L. Gladd
Our family recently returned from a week in the Appalachian Mountains—climbing wooded trails and playing in rock-strewn rivers, soaking up summer sun and cooled by a lovely mountain breeze. I love the outdoors and look forward to such an expedition every summer, but I’m still routinely struck by its effects on us all. The natural world offers profound reminders of God’s sovereign reign, creative power, and intricate design.
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Aug 8, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Joe Carter |Tim Keller |Chris Castaldo |Benjamin L. Gladd
For the past decade, we’ve been living in what many scholars and cultural observers call the “post-truth” age.
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Aug 7, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Don Carson |Tim Keller |Benjamin L. Gladd |Chris Castaldo
Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of New Testament studies from Matthew 24-25. “Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. ‘Do you see all these things?’ he asked. ‘I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.’ As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately.
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Aug 7, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Tim Keller |Benjamin L. Gladd |Chris Castaldo |Nora Allison
Shortly into my first position as a women’s ministry director, I oversaw our church’s annual women’s retreat. Read: I planned, organized, and promoted the retreat; I handled registration, set up, and emceed; I communicated with the speaker, the worship team, the retreat center, the tech people, and the last-minute photographer (because I forgot about that); I answered a million questions, managed the budget, conducted the feedback survey, and wrote the thank you notes.
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Aug 7, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Brandon Smith |Tim Keller |Benjamin L. Gladd |Chris Castaldo
Works like Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor and Charles Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students are commonplace reading recommendations for aspiring pastors. Rightly so. Spurgeon’s book is more than a century old, and Baxter’s dates to the 1600s. While the books may be theologically familiar, their age helps us look beyond the ecclesiology of our cultural moment—or at least keeps us from being too mesmerized by it.
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Aug 6, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Peter Gurry |Tim Keller |Benjamin L. Gladd |Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra
When Dylann Roof shot and killed nine people attending a Wednesday night Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, there were two causes for shock. Roof’s heinous act was the obvious one. The other was forgiveness. Within days of the murders, Nadine Collier looked into the face of her mother’s killer at Roof’s bond hearing and said through tears,You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you.
